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Fitness: Gut Check Time

So here we are, the end of beach season. Many people are sorry to see it end, others say, “Thank goodness I don’t have to wear a swim suit for another 9 months!” Most people’s New Years or Memorial Day resolutions to get in shape did not turn out the way they wanted. Oh well, better luck next year, right? It doesn’t have to be that way.

Before deciding which of the thousand new fad diets or exercise programs you may look into in the next 12 months, first look inside and do a “gut check” as to why things have not worked out thus far. As you read this article, be true to yourself about how much any of this applies to you. If you are happy with your physical self, then great! If not, stop doing the same thing you have been doing, but hoping for different results, and make the change.

DIET

Before addressing what my clients SHOULD eat, I always first look at what they ARE eating. There are a number of diets out there, and most of them do work for some people, but none of them work for everyone. We are not going to compare and contrast the differences, let’s point out why many people cannot succeed with their diets.

1. Right idea, but missing the point. “I don’t know why I’m overweight, I pretty much just eat salad all the time”, or “my diet is healthy, I eat high protein which is low in fat”. Let’s examine a typical salad – iceberg lettuce (almost no nutritional value), cheese (take your pick which kind, they are generally processed with lots of chemicals and fat), bacon bits (not a good source of protein, but plenty of fat and sodium), croutons (sodium and fat), maybe a little bit of cucumbers and a tomato (the only redeeming value of the salad), and plenty of dressing (even most of the low fat alternatives are not exactly healthy). Or the protein eater – what was it cooked in (butter, oil, etc?), what did you eat with it (that wonderful salad, or maybe a good creamy sauce). Don’t get me wrong, I like salad and protein, and they can be extremely healthy, but just because you eat salad and chicken does not automatically make you a healthy eater.

2. The old standard: “just don’t eat anything.” Super-low calorie diets have been a staple for people looking to lose weight forever. Fortunately some very smart people have figured out that eating a cracker and a diet coke all day is not the healthy alternative. Starving your body will cause it to feed on areas you do not want to lose, like muscle tissue; and affect overall functioning throughout your body. Furthermore, these types of diets basically destroy a person’s metabolism, causing your body to burn very few calories on its own.

3. Think before you stuff: the people who do actually eat healthy, and then some. It is amazing to me how generous people can be. As a physical therapist, I am often blessed with thank you gifts from my patients. I cannot accept money or other similar gifts, and people know this. So what do they give: food. This is the case in most office settings, the thank you gift, or it could be leftovers from someone’s party – brought in for the office to share. While it usually tastes good, the food is rarely good for you, but instead some sort of “sugary” treat. When sweets appear, or maybe it is a bag of chips lying around, people often will shovel it in without thinking. So while someone may eat healthy meals, it is the unhealthy snacking that gets them.

I have found that the best first step towards eating right is to keep a food journal – a pain in the butt, but effective. There are only a few requirements, write down everything you put in your mouth (and I mean everything), how much of it, and what time you did it. Try to be as specific as possible – don’t just write “salad” or “sandwich”; write down everything in it. If you have water, write down “1 glass (8 oz.) of water at 9:17 a.m.”.

This task helps in multiple ways. First it makes you actually think before you eat, and decide if putting that cookie in your mouth is worth having to write it down. Second, it makes you aware of your current eating habits and what needs to change. Third, if someone else is helping you with your eating (a personal trainer, dietician, etc.) they can have the facts vs. what you tell them (which is often less than accurate).

EXERCISE

1. “I belong to a gym”, or “I have a great gym in my house.” This may be true, but indicates being in shape about as much as a person who owns a lot of books claiming to be an intellectual. Many of the big, expensive gyms are losing members to the cheaper, more basic gyms. People’s philosophy, why waste $100 per month on a membership I don’t use, when I can just waste $20 per month – can’t argue with that logic.

2. “I am at the gym 3 hours a day.” I actually had a woman say this to me once in an attempt to brag about what great shape she was in. After taking one look at her, I thought, “then you are wasting 2 1/2 hours per day.”

I estimate (and this comes from observing many people) that for every hour the average person “works out,” they get about 20-30 minutes of work done. The rest of the time is spent chatting, taking unnecessary breaks, or just standing around not having a clue.

The other end of the spectrum is the person who actually does spend hours working out. Unless someone is training for a specific endurance event, these people usually are sacrificing quality for quantity, and are risking overworking their bodies, which can be a serious condition.

3. “The lazy exerciser”: the person who does quality exercise on a regular basis, but is lazy the rest of the time. These are the people who drive around a parking lot for 10 minutes looking for the closest spot to the door so they don’t have to walk too far, the first in line to take the elevator to the second floor, or the person who comes home and plops down on the couch, because they are tired from sitting all day at work. Let’s get real, 60 minutes of exercise does not compete with 1380 minutes of laziness.

4. “My job is physical enough.” The truth is, most of the time, no it isn’t.

5. “I don’t have time.” It’s understandable – people need to spend time at work, driving, sleeping, eating, watching TV for four hours, “working” on the computer for two hours, etc. It’s not my place to tell people how to prioritize their lives, but everyone needs to prioritize their own life.

6. “I got off schedule when I went on vacation.” People like to claim that they have specific days that they work out, and specific things they work on those days. For example, Saturdays they work chest and shoulders, Tuesdays are legs (men usually skip that day), Thursdays are back and arms. While all of this probably sounded good in the Muscle and Fitness article where it came from, it gives people the excuse that since they missed the Saturday workout, their schedule was off and that’s why a month has gone by without being able to “get back on.”

There is a simple solution. Schedules will be thrown off; unless you are competing for Mr. Olympia in the next week, start back today. You don’t need to wait for New Years, Christmas, or Rosh Hashanah – be like Nike, “just do it.”

7. “I don’t know what I am supposed to do, or how to do it.” So, instead they do nothing. Here’s the deal: LEARN, or if you don’t want to learn, find someone to tell you what to do. If none of that works, use common sense – you know you should not just be sitting around all the time, start walking every day (and don’t say you walk all day at work).

8. My favorite: “I workout with a personal trainer 3 days per week.” Refer back to number 1 – talking to your trainer for an hour about what they did over the weekend, how their week is going, and what their weekend plans are, does not constitute working out. Obviously, as a trainer myself, I think having a personal trainer is a great way to go, but only if you are doing it for what it is meant.

As I said, this article is meant for everyone’s personal use. It may seem harsh at times, but reality often is. I don’t want to make light of legitimate reasons for not being in the kind of shape you want, because there are many. The point is to examine if you are in the kind of shape you want to be in, look at what may be contributing to it, and make necessary changes. If you try something and it doesn’t work, make another change and keep trying until you find what works for you. Remember, “the only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary” – unknown.

Bob can be reached by email at bob@functional-strength-training.com or visit his website at www.functional-strength-training.com